Your Health Freedom Is Still Under Attack

It seems like a never-ending struggle: the medical/pharmacological industry is again demonstrating its fear of anything not under its direct control.  It's pressing its attack on your right to choose something other than a pharmaceutical option for healthcare at three distinct, yet inter-related points:

1. from the Codex Alimentarius Committee and its Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses,
2. from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), and
3. from the Natural Academies of Science Institute of Medicine (IOM).

We're facing serious threats to our freedom; a coordinated effort (supported by the government — especially the FDA and Congress — along with the media) that could end natural healthcare as we know it as soon as the end of this summer (2005).  [Update: While, as of this date, the worst-case scenario has not befallen us, the threat is still real.  The issue is that these changes will likely come incrementally — as is being seen in Canada and Australia — rather than as one big crash.]

What we're looking at here is the ultimate goal — orchestrated by these special-interest groups — of terminating our access to nutritional supplements that have any therapeutic value.  If Codex is finalized in the terms that it appears likely, and nothing is done to counter the effects of BfR and IOM, we'll be forced to make due with supplements with less than the RDA/DA; and any nutrient that doesn't already have an RDA established will simply be removed from the market.

What is just as alarming is that, of the few nutrients that will remain on the market, only the pharmaceutical (synthetic) forms will be allowed.  These simply are not bioavailable; they actually cause the immune system to respond as if under attack (which it is), and fail to provide the body with the support that it needs.  (I mean, have you ever wondered why there are so many "scientific studies" out there that "prove" that supplements either do no good or are harmful?  That's your answer.)

Please understand: There are many chronic health conditions that are simply untreatable by standard medicine, but which respond very well to nutritional supplementation — but only if those supplements are available in a natural form and in adequate dosages.  The head of the International Advocates for Health Freedom escaped the nightmare of schizophrenia only with the use of high-dose nutritional supplements.  One of my friends was so affected by MS, she was falling out of her chair at work.  She was restored to normal with the use of nutritional supplements.  I've seen people with Muscular Dystrophy get up out of wheelchairs, and diabetics get off insulin after taking nutritional supplements for only a short time.  I've been brought back from the dead (almost literally) through nutritional support — the very things that are about to be banned.

There's a lot of talk about stem cell research and its promise for healing terrible diseases.  But folks, we already have all the help needed right here, right now; but the medical/pharmaceutical industry won't look at it.  Instead, they want to condemn the few who are finding real help from natural substances to the same miserable fate that allowed Dr Kevorkian to justify his actions.

This is shear madness.

It's time for action; and there are groups working hard for your right to choose who can really use your financial support.

Your Action Needed

With so much going on, it's difficult to know what should be done to safeguard our access to natural supplements.  Just what should we be doing?

Since we are dealing with an international issue, writing to Senators and Congressmen about Codex is pretty much a complete waste of time.  Besides:

• Congress whitewashed the March 20, 2001 oversight hearing on Codex.  John Hammell, of the International Advocates for Health Freedom, pushed for this hearing for over five years.  In the end, he wasn't even allowed to testify.  He even received death threats for pushing for oversight.  A congressional staffer who tried to help him was fired, and was replaced by a pharmaceutically-biased person.
• John Hammell's witnesses weren't allowed to testify, either.  The only person allowed to testify at this hearing was someone representing the pharmaceutical lobby.
• In 2000, Congressman Paul attempted to get the USA out of the WTO, via H J Res 90.  (This is a critical issue since our membership in the World Trade Organization makes us subject to whatever limits Codex sets on nutritional supplements.)  Rep. Paul got slammed, and H J Res 90 went nowhere.

Our Congress isn't likely to get us out of either the UN or the WTO.  That would be our best hope, but we have to face our political reality.  Bear in mind that attempts to scuttle DSHEA here at home are far less of a threat than that posed by the EU FSD and Codex, due to the harmonization implications of our involvement in the UN and WTO.  Unless we can kill ratification of Codex in Rome in July 2005, anyone concerned for a natural option in healthcare will be in very serious trouble. 

[Update: Codex was ratified in July 2005, although the framework agreed upon has yet to be filled in with the details.  There was some strong dissent from China about being allowed to use traditional therapies, and concerns expressed by other, smaller players were essentially swept aside.  The focus was on finalization of the framework.  This leaves us with something like having purchased a house without having any idea what the price or design will be.

However, Dr. Rima E. Laibow, M.D. and her husband, General Albert N. Stubblebine III (U.S. Army Retired) have been touring the world, talking with top government people in Africa and Asia, demonstrating to these people that dietary supplements offer a powerful and cost-effective alternative to the expensive pharmaceuticals that they had been taught to believe were their only viable options in healthcare.  (See HealthFreedomUSA.org for details.)  If delegates from these countries balk at the restrictive standards desired by the big EU and American pharmaceutical companies, there is some hope for us.]

If you're an American, and want to defend your health freedom, it is imperative that you take the following simple actions immediately:

• Support the UK-based Alliance for Natural Health with a donation to help them pay their lawyers.  They were in the European Court of Justice on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 (see Alliance for Natural Health's suit heard before the European Court of Justice).  Their lawyers just raised their fees, and ANH is in need of emergency donations from vitamin consumers world wide to pay them.  These fees were incurred for your benefit, so please be generous.  The ANH is continuing to press the fight for health freedom in the courts and in the laboratory.  This all is expensive, and your donations are needed.
• Support HealthFreedomUSA.org as Dr. Rima E. Laibow, M.D. and her husband, General Albert N. Stubblebine III (U.S. Army Retired) tour the world, explaining to government and health officials throughout Africa and Asia that dietary supplements offer a powerful and cost-effective alternative to the pharmacological model being pressed upon them by Europe and the United States.
• To fully grasp the world wide danger dietary supplement consumers are in due to Codex & the EU Food Supplement Directive, watch the streaming video of the DVD "Push Back From CODEX CLIFF".  You can view it at http://www.glycommunity.com/iahf.  This DVD was shot at the Emergency Health Freedom Meeting at ACAM in San Diego in November 2005.  The program was MC-ed by a health freedom icon — Jonathan V. Wright, MD. 
• Order several copies of this DVD to pass out to health food store owners, especially the ones that are members of NNFA, so we can counter the misleading spin disseminated by their own legal counsel, just as ANH is going to doing in court to the EU FSD.

Please understand: The supplement industry in America is being led to the cliff from within.  The NNFA's legal counsel (Sidley, Austin, Brown and Wood LLP) has numerous pharmaceutical clients, and is thoroughly dominated by the pharmaceutical industry.  This is a glaring conflict of interest, but since many of the leading member companies of NNFA are also pharmaceutical giants, positioning themselves for a takeover of the nutrition industry, this fact is overlooked.  Most vitamin companies and health food stores that belong to NNFA don't understand this, and mindlessly trust the work of NNFA.

This law firm has published a spin piece in the December issue of NNFA Today, trying to discredit the work of the International Advocates for Health Freedom.  This needs to be countered.  The DVD will go a long way towards that.

• Support the International Advocates for Health Freedom.   You can do this via PayPal.  The IAHF needs funds for additional public speaking and traveling related to this issue.

The IAHF was created as a catalytic entity in 1996, specifically to address the international threat to health freedom posed by Codex.  John Hammell, the head of IAHF, was kicked off the US Codex Delegation prior to the 2000 meeting in Berlin, and received serious death threats for his efforts to get Congressional ovesight on the issue.

• Pray for ANH, IAHF, HealthFreedomUSA.org and all allied organizations world wide.
• There is also a need to sue the FDA to stop them from ratifying the Codex vitamin standard in July; and we're going to need to mount a major PR campaign in the third world — something which seems increasingly viable, due to a recent statement made in the press by the South African Health Minister, showing that she is in our corner.